Jason's EUR-USD

I have been trading the EUR-USD for a while now and thought I would "kill" some of the inbetween time of the trades with this journal.

My trading works like this...

I forecast a time I expect the market to make a change in direction.
At that time I look at the market and see what it's telling me with price.
I will be looking at things like support/resistance and round number price levels. i.e. 1.3400, 1.3450, 1.3500 and so on.
Also, some "low level" candle reading. i.e. Tails and where they are pointing.

If I like what I see then I will enter the market risking 5% of my account.
If the market goes against me then I lose the 5%. If it goes my way then the up side could be more. Some times much more.
I enter with three orders.
1 is for a 25 pips
2 is for 50 pips
3 is for what ever I can wring out comfortably.
If the market goes against me then and I am stopped out of all three orders and that will equal 5%.
So each order will be worth about 1.5% of my account.
My stop will be 50 pips or less, as in never more than 50 pips.

I will adjust the above as I see fit (price targets for each order) as nothing is ever set in stone.
The above is just my frame work.

Depending on the market I get from one to six or seven "signals" a week and the trades might last from a couple hours to a day or so.

The next timing target is for Thursday at about seven in the morning central time in the US.
we are in a down channel right now. Am waiting for it to break out to the upside as I believe price MAY make it back up to around 1.3700. Only Time will tell.

shouldn't use targets like that, is black death for your account.

from the sounds of it, target 1 and 2 equates to about the same as a complete stop out. so if you continuously hit 1 or 2 targets, and get a few stop outs you can easily end up negative! trust me i did this for a long time untill i saw the light of what i was doing. is a terrible way to manage risk. i wouldnt be taking any contracts off untill it will cover all your risk

but looking forward to your market timing

hwsteele said:

I have been trading the EUR-USD for a while now and thought I would "kill" some of the inbetween time of the trades with this journal.

My trading works like this...

I forecast a time I expect the market to make a change in direction.
At that time I look at the market and see what it's telling me with price.
I will be looking at things like support/resistance and round number price levels. i.e. 1.3400, 1.3450, 1.3500 and so on.
Also, some "low level" candle reading. i.e. Tails and where they are pointing.

If I like what I see then I will enter the market risking 5% of my account.
If the market goes against me then I lose the 5%. If it goes my way then the up side could be more. Some times much more.
I enter with three orders.
1 is for a 25 pips
2 is for 50 pips
3 is for what ever I can wring out comfortably.
If the market goes against me then and I am stopped out of all three orders and that will equal 5%.
So each order will be worth about 1.5% of my account.
My stop will be 50 pips or less, as in never more than 50 pips.

I will adjust the above as I see fit (price targets for each order) as nothing is ever set in stone.
The above is just my frame work.

Depending on the market I get from one to six or seven "signals" a week and the trades might last from a couple hours to a day or so.

The next timing target is for Thursday at about seven in the morning central time in the US.
we are in a down channel right now. Am waiting for it to break out to the upside as I believe price MAY make it back up to around 1.3700. Only Time will tell.

Click to expand...

No reversal today at forecast time. We did have a pause and continuation so it wasn't useless.
Next forecast comes out at 11:00P.M. so I'm not sure if I will catch that one.

Yeah, by both observing and back-testing the markets, I also see those hours and round 0.0100s levels as important. I also see pivots on the EUR/USD forex as important. I was never patient enough to be able to trade a method based on these levels though. I'll usually incur a loss, get impatient, double up and lose everything. Or, I'll start a trade before seeing the right time, right pivot line, and right 0.0100s round number level.

But I think if you could wait for these three things to coincide you would have a profitable system.

Systems have the required patience to trade this system, but unfortunately I couldn't test and therefore couldn't automate this or it would have been a good system. There's too many variables and i have too little knowledge in order to test this system reliably, even less I could implement it. Testing it to see if it works is actually harder than implementing it. I can see these problems:

1) you have to test it on the EUR forex (not the future), but you have to trade it on the future.
2) you have to find a reliable formula to compute the pivot lines, but you need very reliable data for this.
3) you need a formula that trades based on the hours, on the round numbers and on the pivots but which is flexible at the same time... and all those things have to be very reliable... complex to achieve.

On the other hand, a human could achieve this perfectly, but it will be very hard to have to look at markets all day long, waiting for those opportunities, without doing anything. And then if you do something, you might end up losing more than you make with those good trades.

N Rothschild said:

shouldn't use targets like that, is black death for your account.

from the sounds of it, target 1 and 2 equates to about the same as a complete stop out. so if you continuously hit 1 or 2 targets, and get a few stop outs you can easily end up negative! trust me i did this for a long time untill i saw the light of what i was doing. is a terrible way to manage risk. i wouldnt be taking any contracts off untill it will cover all your risk

but looking forward to your market timing

Click to expand...

I believe I should have added the fact that I move the stops to break even when the first target gets hit.
Not always but as I see fit.

I have found that the EUR-USD almost always moves in multiples of 50 pips so unless I am just really off I usually get the first target or two before the third either runs or falls back for a stop out at break even or better.

How do you use stops?

The market made a nice 1 2 3 starting at the time indicated in the last post.
I entered a trade but just put a 25 pip trailing stop in as I didn't want to baby sit but sleep.
I was stopped out in the middle of the move at the nice pull back or "2" wave.

We are at the top of the current price channel on the hour chart so we may have a nice move back down early next week.

This was by far the largest pull back of the current down trend channel so if we do still keep on the same path down I think it will be much choppier.

I won't be looking at the market again until late Sunday night my time so I will calculate the next possible turn point then.

Looking at 2:00 P.M. my time and then again Midnight for possible turns today and tomorrow morning.

Waiting to see if it breaks out to the up side...

Sorry there folks got a little busy...
The market did break out as I had hoped and then hit my target of 1.3395.
The market was true to form and stopped right at the 1.3400 round number before pulling back a tad.

Not sure I will be up for the midnight forecast. As always Time will tell

Well the midnight forecast was a good one.
The black arrow shows the midnight candle which broke the support level and the red arrow shows the pullback and then move back down for a nice 60 plus pips.
The only problem with the whole setup was the fact that I was asleep and not watching it!
Oh well.

Noon my time and then 2:00P.M. look like two other possible times to watch.

Well price is at a nice support area and a timing cycle is due at 2:00P.M. my time so I will be going long here.
Not sure on the exact entry but looking for the 1.3225 area most likely if all works out.
If that entry is taken then the stop will be right about 1.3195 below the last bottom late last week.
My target is going to be 1.3350 or better.
We SHOULD see a nice move here.

Well we once again did not have a reversal but a continuation down through old support at our target time.
And staying true to form when the market broke that support around the 1.3200 level it made it down about 50 pips to the 1.3150 level, so it still made a nice move.
I still have a twitchy feeling that it will head back up maybe 150 pips but as always only Time will tell.

hihi hwsteele
i am of the same opinion..
e/u testing 1.3110 ish (last tested 29 april 09) so i am looking to go long at london open tomorrowif above that level
would really apprciate your views
thaks and good luck

Been away for a day and now looking at the market again I see that it will be tomorrow before the next time cycle I'm counting will come out.

Should be about 2:00A.M. tomorrow morning. and I know that I will not be up for that one.

HURRY said:

hihi hwsteele
i am of the same opinion..
e/u testing 1.3110 ish (last tested 29 april 09) so i am looking to go long at london open tomorrowif above that level
would really apprciate your views
thaks and good luck

Click to expand...

Well all I can say at this time is that the 150 twitchy pips are almost all realized.
The market is still in a down trend on the daily chart so it could be any bodies game right now.
To be honest I am expecting a bit of a break to the down side now. Maybe to around 1.3150.

Ok, so now I wish I had stayed up last night to trade. But I like sleeping more than I like trading so it won out:cheesy:

Last night the move came just a tad early and was a break out again as apposed to a reversal. If you look at the chart you will see a black channel and a smaller green triangle inside. That type of triangle is a nice continuation pattern her on the EUR-USD that would have been great to trade!
Stupid sleep

Still expecting a bit of a move down to at least the price level where the channel started, but as always time will tell.

Still wish had been up for that trade
But all is well as I am taking the rest of most of this day off of trading and spending it with my sweetie!!:clap:

A bit late posting but we had a nice break to the downside of the channel then a pull back/continuation triangle I traded south. We will see how far down the price goes.

Well looks like for the short term at least that was the bottom.:cheesy:
Got out of the short with 32 pips in the bank so all was not lost.

As far as timing goes around 7 and 9 PM tonight look like possible times to look for.
I will not be here for those so I will have to wait for the 5:00AM time tomorrow morning.
If I can get up on time:whistling.

Heading out to have some fun now!!

Wow, so this really nice move to the downside decided to take place WHILE I WAS SLEEPING!
Sleeping and trading the EUR-USD have not been working together very well.
Yet another "would have been sweet" trade.
I am going to have to figure something out.

Back at this after a short break...looking for something to happen at around 12:00AM tonight.